


Fragile

by TerminallyCapricious



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Gore, M/M, monster au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 08:06:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4297086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerminallyCapricious/pseuds/TerminallyCapricious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael Jones is a beautiful omega vampire, horrifying and living in squalor. His free time is spent mindlessly wandering around Austin, mute and threatening. He is an object of lust, fear, and derision.</p><p>Inspired by Chooboozle's Monster AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragile

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Scene Does Not Contain A Lapdance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2375429) by [Chooboozle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chooboozle/pseuds/Chooboozle). 



> Set up:  
> Chooboozle's AU but like, Geoff is a scumbag who drinks too much and he's cheated on his wife a while back, with the hot piece of omega ass in the office (Michael). 
> 
> Michael and Geoff dated for a while, about the time Griffon spiralled into some pretty intense depression.
> 
> They broke up, Michael was effectively abandoned by everyone who cared for him, as dating Geoff severed some ties between him and Ryan. Michael's life goes to shit and his vampire magic goes to shit with it.

The windows at Tina’s bar were taped over with double-layered garbage bags. The inside of the place was dark, as if no one’s eyes could possibly stand any natural light. If questioned, Tina would claim it was to make all monster patrons comfortable. By the time Jack got there, Geoff had been slugging whiskey for the better part of three hours.

Jack grabbed a stool and parked himself next to the Djinn. They sat together in companionable silence, or what passed for it. Jack, a Rugaru, had a broad softness that was only offset by his sharp teeth that made an appearance with every sip of his drink. He lit a cigarette, the cheap shitty kind, and took a short, nervous drag. His smoke drifted to mingle with the rest in a thin layer hovering under the roof like an early morning fog.

“I like the bar a few blocks down better.” Jack said.

“Then why are you here?” Geoff’s voice came out dry and raspy, a product of the hours of disuse.

“Thought I’d stop by and say hi.”

“Hi.”

Jack grinned. “Howdy.”

“Aloha. Caiti’s still in Australia, huh?”

“No, she got back yesterday. Uday’s missing. She’s wound up tight as a clock.”  
  


“Your problems started when you named your cat Uday.” Geoff informed him.

“My problems started when I hired you.”

“Uday, come home,” Geoff whined in an uncanny impression of Jack’s wife. Jack grinned.

Tina, the bartender and owner, poured the alpha another drink without being asked. Then she returned to her seat behind the bar to watch the local news.

“You sure you should drink that?” Jack asked when Tina was gone. “It gets Griffon all upset and then she goes to Caiti and I have to hear about it for days.”

Geoff took a gulp of his drink. “You here to get a report on me? Caiti send you to look?”  
  
“Yeah, I’ve got that much free time.” The beta’s tone was heavily sarcastic.

When Geoff finished his drink, he clanked it against the bar and called over to Tina, “Honey, I’ll take another.”  
  


“You shouldn’t,” Jack answered him.

With an old man’s grunt, Tina got up and poured Geoff another drink. Geoff often thought Tina looked like an angry, bitter teenage girl, with her big eyes and her smooth skin and her short build. She smelled like an alcoholic- that stale, sour smell, but still, Geoff liked her. Well, sort of liked her. The way smokers liked the friendly folks at Marlboro.

“Geoff,” Jack said, “Slow down.”

“Fucking inbreds.” Geoff mumbled, his eyes scanning the bar while his mouth dropped the words as immediately as they formed in his head.

“What?”

“Griffon, she’s inbred, ya’ll are. You Austin-born savages. Everybody’s a cousin. That’s why my kid can’t pass maths, her mother’s parents were probably siblings.”

“Something happen today, Geoff?”

“Yeah. Something always happens. Something or nothing.”

Jack sighed, his eyes back on his glass. “Fine.”

“Pain in the ass” Geoff mumbled at the beta. The calming scent that he’d gotten accustomed to was covered by the dingy bar stench.

Jack looked down at his beer. Geoff looked straight ahead. A reporter on the news announced that the rain over the next week would be relentless, and that Austin would be the hardest hit. Jack sighed. The normally smiling beta seemed sad and despondent sitting there, and Geoff wondered  is that was his special gift to the world, making everyone happy, save for the alpha (his oldest friend, pitiful as that was).

“Hey, Jack,” Geoff said, clapping him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m sorry.”  
  


“You always are. aren’t you?”

“Are you going to take my apology or not?”  
  


“I’ll take it.”

“Buy me a drink?”

“No.”

Geoff smiled willingly at this expected reply. Jack, at first grudgingly, and then freely, smiled back with crooked, razor teeth. “It was worth a try.” Geoff told him.

Geoff noticed that, after drinking several beers, Jack was on the road to joining him in the land of the inebriated. The three of them were talking about the early 2000’s Red Sox. Tina was a Met fan. “What about eighty-six, Jack? Remember Buckner in eighty-six?”

Jack’s eyes widened and he smashed his fist against the bar so hard it must have hurt his hand. Yes, Geoff thought, some monsters in Austin were very stupid. Instead of laughing an unamused Jack out of her bar, Tina looked in the direction of the back of the room where a few underaged kids were shooting pool. She smiled, Geoff followed her gaze, and saw Michael Jones. He was leaning against the back door while some alpha-looking hick fumbled through his pockets, searching for a light for the omega’s cigarette.

Geoff hadn’t looked closely at Michael in a while. Not that that was a bad thing. Ending it with him was the smartest thing he’d ever done in his not-so-smart life.

“Crazy bitch,” Tina said, nodding to Michael. “Dreamed about him last night. Swear to god it felt like it was really happening. My boyfriend thinks he does it on purpose.”

Right now, Michael was swaying to Eric Clapton’s ‘Sweet Home Chicago’. His hands were clasped around the hick’s shoulders. He wore a long, sopping wet fabric wrap that showed off what little he wore beneath it.

Geoff made a motion to stand. Jack caught his wrist. “Leave it alone, he makes you nuts.”

Geoff ignored the beta and walked over. He glared at the hick until the, now obviously some kind of shapeshifter, clenched his fists and asked what he wanted.

“Spend your money someplace else.” Geoff said.

The unnamed alpha asked Geoff is they could take their problem outside. He puffed out his chest like a rooster, and Geoff knew this hick could probably take him. These days, Michael could probably take him.

“Sure. See that guy over there?” Geoff asked, pointing at Jack. “He’s a savage and a cop. This is a bust. Go home before you get in trouble. We’re not after you.” Geoff winked.

The hick took one look at Jack. Jack waved, and when he did, his lips pulled back from his formidable teeth in a wicked grin. The hick picked up his coat and left the bar.

Geoff was left standing next to Michael. Though the music had stopped, he was still swaying.  It occurred to him that the omega had hung out here late at night, after Geoff and most others had gone home, because he seemed like a regular. He was skinny, but his face was bloated, not the chubby cheeked, flushed face from before the kid presented. This bloating was from drinking or, more likely, from strange living habits. Geoff had seen this kind of bloat before. From sleeping through none of the night. From having nothing to do for long stretches of time other than work. Boredom bloat. He wore little sandles, his toes painted pink, and shivered.

Geoff put his hands on the omega’s shoulders and stilled his movement. “How’d you get here?” he asked.

The lad grinned.

“You sick or something?”

He wrapped his arms around him, smelling of musky omega, sour, like he hadn’t showered in a few days, and put his ice cold lips to Geoff’s neck.

The sensation was both erotic and repulsive.

He gave the omega his coat, told Jack to keep his mouth shut, and drove him home.

 ****  


Michael’s apartment, the one he used to share with Ryan, was on the south side of town near the trailer park. He lived on the second floor of the old building. Graffiti was spray-painted on his sidewalk and front stoop. It said things like: Michael Jones sucks cock. A witch lives here. Best lay in town. He is always hungry, he is never satisfied.

Such abuse of the local ‘spectacle’ bolstered Geoff’s theory that the majority of Austin alphas and predators were the product of inbreeding. He stepped over the graffiti and helped Michael through the screen door and up the stairs to his apartment. The door was unlocked, so he pushed it open and searched for a light while the omega stood behind him, swaying like at the bar to music that came from his head.

Geoff had not been here for over a year. Even then, it had only been to drop by, to make sure that all was well and to play that game that all people who once knew each other. No hard feelings? You don’t bear any grudges that might entail stalking my wife or attacking my child? Nod your head for ‘yes’ and shake it if you mean ‘no’. Fantastic! See you next year. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, have a good Easter, and don’t blow anything up on the fourth of July.

When he flicked the switch to the single bulb hanging from the ceiling, he saw that the room was very different to when he had last visited. The first thing he noticed was the ‘soup’.

There were 50 or so soup cans, the insides appearing rusted until he observed they were coated in old drips of dried blood. They sat on the green shag carpet, the kitchen table. Some were inverted. Inside a few were spoons or silly straws that had congealed to the blackened residue.

With one look, Geoff created a scene. Overwhelmed by too many options at the supermarket and with fifty dollars or so in hand, Michael had gone the staple food option. Vegetable soup, he must have decided, would cover all his nutritional requirements. He had probably been good at first. He had probably heated it up on the stove. But after a while he’d said, what the hell, it’s only heat, and spooned it right out of the can. After all the spoons had been used up- this might have taken as long as a week since the skinny omega probably only ate a can a day- he had decided, why do the dishes? Why not just guzzle it like a V8? And then, at some point, Michael had decided it didn’t cover all the nutrients he needed. He had decided to go to the bar and see if he could find someone willing to pay for a meal… or become one.

But perhaps he was giving the lad too much credit. Perhaps there had been no forethought at all.

Along the walls were six large mirrors, each hanging at different levels, none straight. They were cheap, Walmart, faux-cherrywood variety, and they were fixed to their places with a thick layer of duct tape. Inside them, he saw an infinite amount of drunk Geoff Ramseys with their left hands rubbing their foreheads. As he further entered the room, they came at him all at once.

“Jesus shit.” He pronounced.

Michael had stopped swaying, and was now eyeing him. The pupils in the omega’s eyes got big, and then small, and a shiver ran down Geoff’s spine.

He noticed that the lad’s hands and feet were dotted with pinprick-sized red dots: frostbite. “Come on,” he said. He pushed the dirty clothes and soup cans from his bed. Like a corpse, he let Geoff arrange his body so that his arms were at his sides and his head was on top of the pile of clothes that had become a makeshift pillow.

“Get some sleep,” the alpha whispered. He thought about it for a second, then gave into impulse and kissed the vampire’s forehead. Soon Michael’s breath rose and fell as steadily as a metronome.

In the still apartment, he went about looking for a kettle to warm some water for when he woke. But there was no kettle, only stacks of dirty dishes in the sink and little roaches that scampered near the drain. It was a mess too big to bother with. Better to throw everything away. Better to nuke it. The room was so filthy his skin literally itched.

He picked up Michael’s phone. Surprisingly, along with a few crumbs lodged in the receiver, there was a dial tone. He ordered a pizza for Michael and a six pack for himself. Then he left to see the landlord, in search of a kettle.

When he opened Michael’s door, he saw the landlord- Mica, some kinda tailed demon, he remembered- standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at the Djinn.

 

“What are you doing here?” Geoff asked.

Mica grinned. “Just checking. Never know who’s coming and going with Michael. Like to keep myself safe.” She wore her hair in a loose bun, like she had just awoken.

“You can keep safe from inside your own door.” Geoff told her.

Mica just nodded and smiled. Geoff had seen this smile before. It was the smile his daughter gave him: _Sure, I’ll do my homework, just as soon as you explain to me why you come home drunk and make your wife so sad._ A good deal can be conveyed with a shit-eating grin.

“I think he’s sick up there, got a case of hypothermia. You got a kettle I can use? I want to make some tea or something.”

Mica took a deep breath. “Why are you doing him favours? He doesn’t spook you? Makes people always feel like something bad is on its way. Can’t stop thinking about him, Bitch gets in your head. Knows what you don’t want to see.”

“A kettle,” Geoff said. “They have handles, you boil water in them.”

Mica shrugged, “He owes me four hundred, last two months.”

“That’s nice. You got a kettle?”

“I don’t got nothing.”

“I see your education did not place its emphasis on grammar.”

Mica’s mouth turned down and her tail flicked in contempt. “I need my money.”

They looked at each other for a while. “Fine,” Geoff gave in. he pulled a greasy Bic pen from his jeans pocket and a loose cheque from his wallet. Mica grabbed it as soon as Geoff had scrawled his signature.

“Can I get that kettle now?” Geoff asked.

“I told you, I don’t got one.” Mica said, winking to Geoff and leaving to her adjoining apartment.

“Thanks, you’ve been a big help,” Geoff called out, while lightly kicking the door. “That’s what community is all about, helping crazy people not die of hypothermia.”

With two hundred dollars less in his checking account, and no kettle for his troubles, Geoff started back up the stairs. He was winded when he reached the second floor, and he realised that, in addition to being miserably out of shape, he was also nearing sobriety. The unwelcome Jiminy Cricket began asking questions: What rational person drinks this much and still calls himself rational?

As he neared Michael’s door, he heard a buzzing sound. He stopped, leaned against a wall in the hallway, and listened. All he heard was buzzing, like a thousand tiny voices speaking all at once. He waited, but the voices did not go away. His heart was beating fast, and he realised that for the first time in a long time, he was frightened. He snorted to himself; a grown man frightened of an eighty-pound anorexic omega that played his television too loudly. The booze was making him soft in the head.

He opened the door and the buzzing stopped. There was actually a shushing sound and it quieted. Out of the corner of his eye, he was sure that he saw movement coming from one of the mirrors. He was sure he saw a crowd of people. Angry people.

For a moment he understood, and it rooted him to the floor. The flooding. The dreams that all the people around Michael seem to share. The way the omega’s pupils had danced. These things amassed in Geoff’s mind. If he was sober, he would have run. But he stood for a few seconds too long, and his moment of clarity passed. In its place returned numbness, the cloudy filter of booze through which he viewed and lived his life.

Geoff blinked, and the faces in the mirror were gone. His normal reflection replied to him. He winked at it. Waved at it. it waved right back He decided he was just too drunk.

Just then the bell rang, and he remembered the pizza. Better yet, the beer.

He opened the door a crack. The drenched kid holding the box seemed somewhat familiar. The kid tried to peek over Geoff’s shoulder, and the alpha leaned against the doorway, blocking the rest of the apartment from view. He tipped the boy seven dollars on a twenty dollar order and shut the door in the kid’s face.

When he turned around, Michael was standing right behind him. He jumped, “Jesus. Don’t creep up on people like that.” He said.

The omega grinned, looking less tragic than when Geoff had seen him in the bar, and a lot more menacing. He remembered the buzzing sound, and his stomach dropped a few inches.

“Come on,” he said guiding the lad to the table. He pressed down on Michael’s shoulders so that he sat, Then he placed a slice of pizza in his hand, holding it up for him so that he would not plop it down into the old cigarette ashes.

“Eat your pizza,” He told the boy.

Michael lifted the slice up to eye level and inspected it. Geoff took it from him and fed the boy a bite. Tomato sauce slathered Michael’s mouth. He took the slice and began to feed himself.

Geoff looked for a napkin. None present. No paper towels. Toilet paper though, about five squares left. He thought it might be rude to finish it all until he remembered that social etiquette was not a pressing factor. He ripped off the last of it, crinkled it together, returned to Michael and handed him the wad. “Use this.”

The omega straightened the ball and laid it across his lap.

“On your face, Michael.”

He held the paper in his hand, considered it, then patted it daintily across his lips.

“Crap” Geoff said. He opened a beer and looked out the window, covered in sheets of rain. Michael stood and brushed his lips against Geoff’s neck. The omega smelled of smoke. From the cigarettes, from his sick scent, both deeply ingrained in Michael’s skin. The skin on his upper arms were drawn taut over his bones. He smiled at Geoff because he thought the alpha liked what he saw.

Geoff touched the lad’s stomach, his ribs. Unlike his wife, Michael moved under his touch. He wanted to kiss him. Feel a warm, responsive body next to his own. Instead, he literally shook himself, stepped back, and kicked over an empty soup can in the process. The spoon inside it rattled as it hit the carpet.

“What the hell happened to you?” Geoff asked. He knew this was a stupid question. He could have asked the omega this yesterday. He could has asked him this a year ago. But he’d never seen him this deranged until now. “What’s with the mirrors? You really lost it now? You gone over the edge?”

Michael grinned and lit a cigarette. It occurred to Geoff that the omega was having a grand old time. Whooping it up. Watching him squirm was fun.

He wish he’d let the hick deal with these problems. Let the hick pay the mute’s rent, see how he liked it. “How long you gonna go without talking outside of work? Do you talk to yourself when you’re alone? I’m a little lost here on the artistic sentiment.”

Michael blew a smoke ring.

A beer was in order.

After three, Geoff started to feel better. But not enough. “You got anything else to drink?” He asked.

Michael pointed to a cabinet in the kitchen, Inside was the bottle of Jack Daniel’s he has left there a year before. He opened it and took a slug, knowing that tomorrow he would be too hungover for work, knowing that he wouldn’t get any of his job done, knowing that he didn’t even want a drink. He was drunk enough. But it would calm him down. Yes, another drink, and he’d feel much better.

The room didn’t really look so bad. Just messy. And the mirrors were an artistic statement. Michael was commenting on the degradation of omegas over their looks in modern society. He wanted to be a ballerina. Whatever. Who the hell cares.

He wasn’t even thinking about how this room was exactly like what was inside of his wife’s head, cluttered with crap and closed within itself.

He wasn’t thinking about how shitty it must be to have nobody to take care of you when you get sick. How incredibly shitty to be set adrift from your head vampire with no place to go. What an unforgivable thing had happened to this omega. A thing that could never be fixed, no matter how bad Geoff felt right now.

“Shit,” He said aloud, barely resisting the urge to bury his face in his hands.

Michael got up and pulled the entire wrap off over his head. It dropped to the floor and Geoff saw his naked body. He was so thin his breath caught. Impossibly sharp bones jutted out against pale skin. The sight of him made Geoff remember why he had lost faith in a higher power.

The omega touched his cheek very gently. He caressed him. It was a painful kind of touch. It reminded Geoff of the first time they had been together, That feeling of being swallowed. The pleasure of you own downfall, knowing that it would be hard to fall any further. He was just a kid, even now, twenty-four years old.

Michael curled himself around him and he could feel his warmth, the beat of his pulse. He bent down and unbuckled his belt. Geoff was horrified to discover he was hard. In one of the mirrors, he could see the two of them. A lanky man and a naked omega who no longer looked like an omega. Maybe he did this to end that image. To change the story. To curl it into something of beauty. To affirm that he was still an alpha. Maybe he was just drunk. He kissed Michael’s cold lips.

He returned that kiss. He did not like himself for thinking this but he knew it was true. It did not matter what they did. If what he was doing was wrong, it did not matter. He imagined that most of the men Michael had brought here had thought the same thing

He carried the omega to the bed, he was as light as dry bones. Geoff struggled with the buttons on his own shirt, and Michael took his hands away and moved them to the outsides of his thighs. It was a pantomime, he knew, of wanting him so badly that he could not wait for the alpha to undress. It was just as false as his desire for the omega. Had they ever meant this to be real?

He pushed his pants down and Michael pulled him over himself. There was a mirror over the omega’s head. Though he knew he would not like what he would see, he couldn’t help but look at it. Geoff did not see his own reflection. He saw Michael’s face. It was gaunt. Black wires weaved their way down his neck, and blood trickled along the side of his face, and he knew that if he made love to this omega, something very bad would happen,

Geoff blinked and the image was gone. He saw only his own drunken face staring back at him. Michael pulled on him, placing him inside of the omega’s hole in a way that made him feel disconnected from his own body. Violated, in some indefinable way. What they did after that could not have been characterised as making love. There was too little touching. Michael felt… cold. He felt dead.

The alpha didn’t think he would come. He did not even try. He couldn’t feel the swelling of his knot. He found himself wishing, even during the act, that it would be over, That it could be taken back. He pulled back but Michael stopped him. The omega stroked him. Geoff waited. He held his thin arms, felt the bones of his legs, and it excited him, the frailty of the omega. He came looking into Michael’s wild eyes.

When he finished, not even out of breath, Geoff zipped up his pants and stood. “I’m sorry. I should go. I’ll be back. I just have to go right now.”

Michael didn’t answer. His head was bent and Geoff couldn’t see his face. Crying probably, over what he had done. Geoff fought the urge to leave. He wanted to leave very badly. It was a rush of adrenaline. It was not exactly fight or flight, just guilt.

Michael raised his head and when he did, he was smiling. It was a happy smile. Geoff hadn’t seen Michael happy in too long. It terrified him, and he knew, suddenly, that he’d been tricked. The omega stood and walked towards the door. He grabbed Michael’s torso as gently as he could and pulled him back. “You need to put some clothes on.” He whispered.

Michael sank his fangs into Geoff’s arm. The alpha howled and let him go. He left the apartment. Cradling his arm, he followed. Thinking (because he could not help it, because he was a monumental shit) that Mica would see Michael and would know. All of them would know the dirty things Geoff Ramsey did to sick omegas behind closed doors.

Michael faced him, stark naked, at the top of the stairs. His heels teetered over the edge and he smiled. His face was flushed.

Geoff heard the buzzing sound he’d heard before, only now it was coming from Michael. Only now he could have sworn he could hear his own voice in the din, too.

Behind the omega, he spotted a housefly, doing impossibly fast loops and maneuvers that made him frown and try to figure it out. It was the fly that made Geoff remember that, despite how close to a dream it seemed, this was real and should not be happening.

Michael lifted his hand. He waved. Geoff tried to grab the omega’s arm. Michael jumped back, stepping into nothing but air. He tumbled down. It happened almost in slow motion. Smiling, he fell backwards. When he first came into contact with the stairs, he hit the underside of his head, the swell where the cranium meets the spinal cord and the cerebral cortex begins. Then he tumbled, limbs splayed until he hit the landing.

Geoff ran down after him and checked his neck for a pulse but none was present. When he tried to lift the omega, his head rolled parallel to his shoulder. It reminded Geoff of that ghost story about the girl who wore the black ribbon around her neck. Her husband unties it while she sleeps and her head falls off.

Geoff walked back up the stairs. At first, he could not find the phone. He couldn't remember where it was. And he couldn't remember whom to call. He started to dial his own home number before he realised that was a bad idea. And then he was going to call the hospital because maybe it wasn’t that bad, maybe they could fuse some things and put him back together,

He replaced the phone on its holder. He took a deep breath. That didn’t help. He looked at his shoes. They needed polish. He thought he was going to vomit.

He sat down on the bed Michael had been sitting on just a few moments before, closing his eyes, and opening them again. He could not stop shaking. He noticed the way the room was kept; crap all over the floor, a layer of cigarette ash coating all surfaces, the bottle of whiskey he should not have been drinking, and he knew he should have seen this coming.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So like... I like the whole "Happy omega" idea, like omegas being well-padded, cared-for babbus, but like the combination of the dynamic and the Monster AU written by Chooboozle (10/10 would recommend) made me think about really fucked up, powerful omegas?
> 
> (This isn't my normal, light writing with long sentences... I don't like change...)


End file.
